‘Europe getting fed up with the US business influence’

A French farmer drives an old U.S. combine, dating back to the 1950's, as he harvests barley in a field in Sancourt, near Cambrai northern France, July 18, 2014. (Reuters/REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol) / Reuters

Europeans’ anger with their governments over US-led sanctions against Russia can go “quite far” as they are fed up with US business influence helping arms exporters and NATO, but not average Europeans, former British diplomat William Mallinson told RT.

RT:On Friday, French farmers in the city of Brest in Brittany
set local tax office on fire, in protest against tit-for-tat
sanctions with Russia. Is the Russian food ban hitting European
businesses that bad, making people that desperate?

William Mallinson: Yes. What we have to remember
is that the EU is originally founded on the livelihood for
farmers and for supplying food to Europeans. Despite the fact
that there is a very large number of huge farms, in France, in
particular, [there are] still a lot of small farmers. The French
agriculturalists are one of the most powerful political forces in
France. I remember the Poujadists in 1960-70s [a movement named
after Pierre Poujade that articulated the economic interests and
grievances of shopkeepers and other proprietor-managers of small
businesses facing economic and social change - RT]; they are
quite capable of causing major problems for the government.

France is a rather strong country compared to Greece, for
example, where there is a similar problem with agriculture, and
it makes one think of something far more powerful in the European
context, which could influence Spanish farmers as well. Greece
unfortunately has gone the way of America much more than France
has, after the Americans got rid of Karamanlis, because he was
trying to come closer to Russia. The Greek situation is difficult
but the French thing is a good example of what could happen in
other Southern European countries.

You should also connect this to the impending deliveries of the
two helicopter carriers to Moscow. This is all connected. Jobs
are at stake, economy is at stake. You are going to see a lot of
tension now between the French President, who tends to be rather
pro-American in foreign policy and pro-NATO, and forces which are
becoming stronger in France, probably surrounding Marine Le Pen,
who is not an extremist, she is quite intellectual, even people
like Dominique de Villepan who was famous in the UN in 2003 not
wishing to go into Iraq. We will see more people like that going
into the ascendant as the sanctions bite the original backbone of
the whole European idea. Remember that idea wasn’t just never to
have a war again, it wasn’t just coal and steel, it was very much
agriculture and it was run mainly by the French. The French still
influence it in their own interest. So we need to look at this
quite seriously, it’s a serious move and it may actually be
positive for Russia in the long-run.

RT:So we're now seeing people getting more
and more angry with their governments, over Russian food embargo.
How far is this going, in your opinion?

WM: I think it is going to go on and on as long
as the sanctions continue - sanctions which are very much for
people’s egos and are very much orchestrated by the Americans.
Europe is slowly getting fed up with the US business influence
which helps the American arms shareholders and NATO far more than
the average European citizen. Given that most European countries
luckily still have some vague sense of democracy, they have to
listen to the people, and so it can go quite far.

RT:Brussels promised European farmers
compensation, now that they lost one of their key markets. Will
it be able to cover all the losses and deliver the promised money
to the farmers?

WM: I doubt that it will be easy to deliver
because the European budget isn’t quite big enough. Although the
largest part is still probably agriculture, the euro itself is
under some threat. If it does deliver it will cause problems in
other sectors of the economy, generally in the European economies
and will not help Europe out of the recession, which it is still
in. It is really a lose-lose situation with the sanctions,
frankly.

RT:Which side is suffering most from this
sanctions war?

WM: It’s not good for anybody. We have a saying
in Greece “we are all boiling in the same pot”. Quite
frankly, it is bad for everybody and to measure this in
percentages, I would say that in the long-term if America
continues to twist European arms successfully, it will probably
benefit Russia more because it will help the BRICS economies to
get stronger, to have their own currency systems, etc. And that
would be an unfortunate move perhaps, but it is maybe what will
happen. Russia is a far older, stronger, huger, slower but more
thoughtful country than the US, and therefore, logically
speaking, historically speaking, it is undoubtedly Russia which
will have the upper hand. Not that it is looking for it, but it
is what would happen if the NATO neurosis continues.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.